Reflective
Practice and Changes in Practice
Our Board of Trustees is very keen to
promote substantial professional development opportunities for our teachers and
four staff from our school have done the Mindlab course.
For myself, my commitment to the journey
has been commitment to the staff. I felt
if, with the full load of principalship, I could complete the study and assignments
alongside the staff, it would model the possibility of deep professional
learning for all of us. I have had the
opportunity to update with the latest information. As a school we had taken big leaps forward with collaborative and digital learning but could not sustain our momentum and suffered as a result of it. We have had a chance to reflect together, and heal from some of the traumas of some of these processes and find our way forward again.
After doing the course there are two key
areas I will approach differently with the staff:
- Criteria 5: Show leadership that contributes to effective teaching
and learning. (Ministry of Education, n.d.)
There is an assumption that when
something has been around for a while e.g. the key competencies -nearly 10
years embedded and central to the New Zealand curriculum - that everyone would
be doing them well and consistently. I
have found my learning on this course has made me pause and go back. Ten years down the track something which
started with meaning and power, has ended up being catchwords with little
substance. In this area there is no
point leading forward until we go back and develop an understanding of key
competencies as contextual dispositions.
- Criteria 7: Promote a collaborative, inclusive, and supportive
learning environment. Combined
with: Criteria 12: Use critical inquiry and problem-solving effectively in
their professional practice (Ministry of Education, n.d.)
It has become clear to me that I have
taken for granted that all teachers understand what is meant by research-based
practice.
Our Community of Learning is committed to
using the spiral of inquiry (Timperley, Kaser, & Halbert,
2014) to
develop practice. My learning from this
course and the interactions it has prompted have led me to appreciate more
deeply the change in teacher thinking required to move into evidence-based
practice. That has made me go a lot
slower than I otherwise would have with the development of our spirals.
My dream: These two papers
will complete my third Masters degree.
I have come to a saturation point where I feel there is nothing more to
be gained from this. I am inspired by
the opportunities offered by our Community of Learning. I am relieved there is a new government and
we can hopefully reclaim a broad and meaningful education. I want to continue leadership in our COL and
find ways of embedding and sustaining good practice so we don’t have to forget
and relearn what key competencies mean, for instance. I want for the learners in my school to be reaching
for the stars as lifelong learners in the Catholic faith, engaged and empowered
in deep learning for success (same goal as always). As far as study goes, I think my next step is
research. This will probably mean EdD or
Phd studies and it will probably be around collaborative and distributed
leadership and holistic, agentic learning.
REFERENCES
Ministry of Education
(nd). Practising teacher Criteria and e-learning . Retrieved from http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Professional-learning/
Timperley, H., Kaser, L.,
& Halbert, J. (2014). A framework for transforming learning in schools:
Innovation and the spiral of inquiry. Victoria: Centre for Strategic Education.
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